The use of AI is happening and spreading all around us, and language learning is not immune to its influence. Maybe you're even using to help you as you work towards your CELPIP and English learning goals.

But AI raises some serious questions for me that I want to wrestle with, and share with you.

The first: can (should) AI take the place of teachers and actually interacting with other people as you build your English skills?

In this episode I'm reflecting on the idea of cognitive debt—how relying too heavily on AI can lead to a superficial understanding of information. I also tackle cognitive surrender, which happens when you blindly trust AI’s output without questioning it, which can dilute critical thinking skills, and lead to making mistakes.

I believe we need to embrace AI as a helpful tool while still valuing the irreplaceable human connection and interaction that teachers and the people around us provide. So, let’s explore how you can leverage AI effectively while keeping your learning experience rich and meaningful!

Takeaways:

1. AI is a powerful tool for language learning, but it should never replace real human interaction.
2. Cognitive debt occurs when we rely too heavily on AI for quick information without fully understanding it.
3. Engaging with real people while learning a language solidifies skills more effectively than using AI alone.
4. Cognitive surrender happens when we blindly trust AI without questioning its information or advice.
5. Practice your language skills in real-life situations to develop deeper connections with the material.
6. Use AI as a supplementary resource, but prioritize meaningful conversations with others for true learning.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. Youssef Assad's LinkedIn post.
2. Is AI Making You Dumb? - CBC Front Burner Podcast
3. Need help with your CELPIP Prep? Join the CELPIP Success School now!

Mentioned in this episode:

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Speaking Momentum Audio Program

AI seems to be everywhere these days. Have you noticed that? It seems like everywhere I look and work online I see that. Annoying. Well, it's come to be annoying for me.

That annoying little logo of like two or three star like figures telling me that there's some sort of AI powered tool that I could use that will make me, my work, my life more productive and more effective. And maybe you've seen that happening too.

And I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about how I and you and people in general are turning to AI to help them with their day to day life. And in your case, turning to AI to help you as you prepare for the celpip and to build your English skills in general.

And a recent post on LinkedIn by and I hope I get his name right, Youssef Assad, which I'm going to link to in the show notes today, really got me thinking even more about how AI is being used in the whole language learning space. And the question that was kind of percolating inside of me as I read through Yosef's post was that our teachers even needed anymore.

And no, that was not the point that Youssef was trying to make. It was just something that kind of stuck out to me as I was reading through and it just made me think, what? Like, do we even need teachers anymore?

And if we do, what should their role be when it comes to working with students today in our modern world, when we're dealing with artificial intelligence tools that can help us access so much information so quickly and instantaneously, what role should a teacher play? And do you actually need one? And well, like I said before, it got me thinking a lot about this.

So my whole intent with this episode is to share a little bit of my light research that I've been doing with you. And I'm going to be continuing to return to this subject every so often as I go along and as I learn more things to share what I'm learning with you.

Because here's the thing, AI, whether we like it or not, it's here to stay, isn't it? I mean, I feel like it's like the way the Internet kind of arrived on the scene in the late 90s.

I don't know if you were around for that, but I remember a world before the Internet and when it arrived and I can remember the similar space where we are now, you know, where people look at AI and they're not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing and they're not sure if they should. You know, hang on to the old ways of doing things or embrace the new way.

And I remember a very similar conversations happening when the Internet was first arriving.

Like people were kind of split, you know, some immediately gravitated towards it and loved it, while others were kind of like, this is the end of the world as we know it and terrible things are going to happen as a result and we should avoid this. I kind of feel like we're in the same space now, even though I think the world is already tilting towards embracing AI.

And in honesty, I think that, I mean, I use AI too, and I'm not going to make this into a whole stay away from it, it's a horrible thing type of an episode because I don't think about it that way and I don't think like what I was alluding to at the beginning, even though it had me. Joseph's post had me thinking about the role of teachers and is there one?

I do firmly believe that we will always need teachers in our lives, people like real people, that we won't be able to eliminate that human to human interaction. So yeah, I think that my first point is AI is here to stay and we need to learn how to use it well.

And I know that you are probably already using it or thinking of using it to help you in your practice as you get ready for the CELPIP exam. So I guess my hope in this episode is that I'm going to be sharing what I am learning on this topic, coming from being a teacher for over 18 years.

And I also want to help you use this tool in the most effective way possible to help you to move towards your goals of learning English, of getting ready for the CELPIP exam. Does that sound like a good idea? I hope so. If it does, please sit back, relax, enjoy today's episode.

And before I go any farther, I want to introduce myself. If you don't know me, hi, my name is Aaron. Welcome to the Celpip Success Podcast.

This is the podcast that's going to help you get ready for your CELPIP exam and build your English skills and speak English fearlessly. And today I hope it's going to be about helping you think about and use AI more effectively.

What I'm going to be sharing with you today is something that I learned from a interview from one of my favorite podcasts. It's called Front Burner. I've talked about this before. I've mentioned this podcast before on this on my podcast because I like listening to them.

But there's one particular episode that came out about, well, at the time of this recording, about three weeks ago. And it's called is AI making you dumb?

And I'm going to be linking to this in my show notes today, just like I'm linking to the LinkedIn post by Joseph. And I'm saying this out loud to help me to remember that I need to do this.

But yeah, I'm basing a lot of what I'll be sharing with you today off of that podcast episode. It's less than a little bit less than 30 minutes. And. And I would encourage you to listen to it if you are at all interested in this topic.

I think it will, I think you'll find it really thought provoking.

And here are the top things that I pulled out of that interview that I wanted to share with you that kind of had me thinking about the way I use AI and maybe the way you are using it as well. The first thing that is mentioned is something called cognitive debt.

And the idea behind cognitive debt is that you are, when you use AI, you are getting access to a vast amount of information really quickly. Like, you don't have to go through the process of research.

You don't have to go through the process of, you know, going to the library, pulling out a book, reading that book and trying to understand what that book is all about. Instead, you just ask AI a question. You ask it to summarize something for you. Like what I was saying at the beginning.

You know, if you don't want to go through a big email that you might get at work, you can just click on a button and the AI tool will give you a quick summary of what is being talked about in that email without you actually having to go through the process of reading everything and building the summary yourself.

And the cognitive debt side of things, is that like the metaphor or the story that they allude to inside of that episode is that using AI can be a lot like buying something with your credit card. You just go out today, use your credit card, pick up whatever thing it is, and you take it home and you can begin using it instantly.

But you didn't actually pay for it yet. The bill comes later. And the idea of cognitive load is that you pick up whatever piece of information you are working with.

Like, let's say, let's just use that, you know, email summary as something really simple to work with.

Or if you've ever done this, I don't know if you've ever done this, but I've often used AI to summarize YouTube videos for me, it's even built right in into the YouTube platform, isn't it? Have you ever done that?

Have you ever looked and noticed that, that if you go right onto YouTube, you click on the video, if you look down where the text part is, like where it's telling you what this video is all about, you will see. I'm not going to mention the names because I don't, I don't want to do that.

But you'll, you'll see the AI tool built right inside of that YouTube video and if you press on it, it can interact with the transcript of that video to help you to quickly, you know, figure out what this video is all about without you actually having to invest time and energy to watching the whole thing. And that can be a great time saving resource, right? It can help you to, to watch an hour long.

Well, not watch, but it can help you to work through an hour long video in just a matter of, of seconds. And you'd be able to just read the summary and understand what's going on in it.

So the thing about cognitive debt is that because you used that tool to give you a quick summary without you actually watching the whole thing and interacting with the content being presented to you by whoever it is that's, that's making the, the video, something goes missing in that process. Like we need that process of working through the content in order to make that material truly ours.

Just like we need to finish paying for whatever thing we purchase with our credit card in order for that thing to be really ours. You know what I mean?

Like we need to put in the, the work of making that knowledge belong to us by actually interacting with the whole thing all the way through. That's what cognitive debt is, getting access to quick information, which is probably helpful, which is probably useful.

But if we don't go through the process of truly understanding what it's all about, then that knowledge, that understanding isn't truly ours. It doesn't connect with us on a deeper level. And I was thinking a little bit about, you know, Duolingo here and my family.

I've never used Duolingo, but members of my family have loved putting in their day by day practice to try to keep their streaks up. And they've been doing really well.

They've been making progress inside the app, but here's what I've been noticing and here's what they notice as well, that no real development happens because they don't get out and actually use what they're learning. You know, they're Just practicing inside of the app.

So they're good inside of the app, but are they good in real life using the language skills that they're. They're practicing? Not really, because, number one, there's nobody around that they can practice with. I mean, they're.

They're using it to practice Korean or they. They were using it to practice Korean. And we don't have a lot of Korean people in our lives that we can actually be practicing with.

And so they're getting that. Those quick hits of knowledge, those quick hits of practice. But there's no opportunity to put that practice into. Into. Into practice. There's no.

There's no opportunity to use what they're learning in real life, like, to go through the process of actually trying to engage with another human being. And so that, that learning or the things that they're.

They're drilling on inside of the app, I don't think have the opportunity to grow deep roots inside. And those deep roots grow when we actually try to use what we're learning.

So the point here is that in order to really build your language skills, I think that you need to use your skills in the real world. And AI does not give you the same kind of feedback or opportunities to practice as another human being will.

So in that sense, like that whole cognitive debt piece, I think it's a real risk to relying on AI to help you build your language learning or to help you build your celpip skills. So that's the first point.

Cognitive debt, it means you're getting access to quick information without actually going through the process of understanding what's going on in the background without actually understanding where that information comes from and why it matters. And you like interacting with it and making it yours.

And the only way to make that happen when it comes to learning a language is by actually using what you're learning in the real world with another human being. The final point that I want to leave with you today from the front burner interview is something called cognitive surrender.

Cognitive surrender means believing everything AI tells you simply because it's a machine, it's a computer, so it must know more than you. And here's a quote from the interview that I think drives this whole idea home.

And I quote, you surrender your ability to make your own decisions because you blindly trust that the AI. End quote.

Now, if I'm being honest, I'm going to have to tell you that it would feel great to be able to say, I've never done this, but you know what? I have. I have blindly Followed what AI told me simply because, well, it must know better than me, right?

I don't know if you've ever done that, but I'm guilty. I'm raising my hand. I'm saying, yep, I've done this from time to time. I'm definitely getting better at it.

And now that I'm learning about this here with you, I can, I can definitely say that I'm going to be putting my shield up a little bit more when it comes to taking the feedback that AI would share with me. And it actually plays together.

I'm thinking of a specific situation where I was working on a strategy that I was trying to deploy for this business, for my business, and I was working with AI on the development of it. And what happened was, is on some levels, I was kind of feeling stuck. I wasn't sure how to move forward.

And then AI came back to me with this new or different way of thinking about the, about the thing that I was working on. And I immediately went for it, at least initially, because I thought this has got to be the right move because, you know, it's smarter than me.

AI is smarter than me. It must know what it's talking about, you know what I mean?

But I noticed something strange happening as well as I started trying to deploy or use this strategy and it had to do with the whole cognitive debt piece I was just talking with you about. I was just blindly following the advice that this AI tool was giving me and I was using its information to base what I was trying to do on.

Without me actually working through everything that it was presenting to me. I was just, I wasn't copying and pasting what it was telling me to do, but I was mentally, I was copying and pasting its ideas into myself.

But in reality, I did not work through everything that it was talking about and therefore it didn't truly feel like it was me when I was trying to do this OD in the world Ode on my website.

Ode in my, in my day to day work as I've helped people with the CELPIP exam, as I was trying to put this into practice, it just didn't feel like me as I was trying to use this idea. And so I ended up scrapping it because it felt like I was trying to put on somebody else's clothes. It just didn't feel like how I do things.

And I wasn't buying it on the inside, if that makes sense. I didn't pay the price of working through and building and developing the ideas myself.

So that's where the cognitive debt piece comes in and the cognitive surrender as well. I just took that advice thinking, well, I told me it's got to be right. I hope I'm not the only one who has done this.

But anyway, I hope that this is resonating with you on some level. But here's the thing about cognitive surrender. AI lacks some things that it won't be able to get that only we humans have.

And that is one our human experience what it's like to be us day in and day out, making the choices that we make, experiencing the feelings that we feel as we do it, and experience the feelings that we feel as we get the results of our actions. AI can't have that and it can't convey those ideas through those feelings and through those results.

It also can't understand, at least at this point, the, as far as I know, your tone of voice, like it can't measure how you are delivering the information you are delivering. It can just pay attention to a transcript. And transcripts really don't do a good job of conveying feeling or emotion.

And that conveying of feeling and of emotion and working through and using your experiences as you give your answers, as you're preparing for the celpit, for example, is a big part of how you get good results on the test, both in your, your speaking skills and in your writing skills. You need to be able to convey feeling and share experiences that AI can't have.

And the point being to this is that we can't surrender everything to an AI resource or tool thinking that it knows best, because it knows a lot, that's for sure. But it's missing key things that only we as, as humans have. And those are the things I was just talking about.

There's probably more things that AI can't do that only humans can do.

But I say those things, I point out those things to underscore the importance of making sure that we just don't buy everything that AI tells us because it doesn't have all the information. And when it comes to practicing with it to help you to get ready for your exam, we can't base all of like, we can't base our work 100% on what it.

It spits back at us because it's missing key pieces of information that only another human being can give us. So here are my initial takeaways for today. Number one, if you've been following this far, I give you a huge high five and thank you for doing that.

But number one, let's just Agree that AI is going to be around, it's not going anywhere and you are probably already using it. I know I am, but how we use it really matters.

I think one of the things that I'm trying to underscore here, and maybe it didn't come across very well, but that AI is a useful tool to help us supplement what we're doing, but it shouldn't be a replacement. Like that's where that whole like the cognitive debt and the cognitive surrender part comes in.

Like it's a good tool and that it can help us to, to get a quick summary maybe of something that we're working on. It can give us a quick summary of our own, you know, output as far as our practice goes.

But if we're not using what we're learning from it, like what we're getting from it, the feedback that we're getting fed from it, if we're not actively out in the world using those skills with real people, I think that that learning will never really solidify inside of us and become who we are because that's kind of how we learn things. That's how you build your language skills. It's by using what you have with other people and learning from those experiences.

It's from being with other people and listening to them, using English and taking what you are hearing and trying to understand what's going on and then you responding to it. You know, we need that human to human interaction to build those skills. And AI can only take us part of the way.

Like it can give us the summary, but it's not giving us the full, you know, the deep part of the conversation that's been going on. And we definitely don't need to be paying attention to it as if it knows everything, because it doesn't.

It's missing key things that only human to human interaction has. So to summarize that last point, make sure that you're putting in your reps with real people. Don't just rely on AI feedback.

Use what you have with real people to get real feedback. And that is far more engaging than just relying on AI.

I know it can feel scary, I know it can feel intimidating to try to use your English skills with the people around you. But my friend, relying only on AI, I think it's not the best way to go.

I would say use it to supplement your work, but not to replace the work of actually getting out into the world and using your English with the people around you. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. And I hope that you'll come back again next time. Bye. Bye.